Homebrew and PostgreSQL 9.4

As you may know, I am a big PostgreSQL user and fan. I also use Homebrew to manage 3rd party software packages on my Mac. PostgreSQL 9.4 was just released a couple days ago with some really cool features — a binary-format JSON datatype for speed and flexibility (indexes on JSON keys? Of course.), and some really good performance improvements. Read the release blog post and release notes for more information.

However, if you’ve used PostgreSQL before, you know that upgrading can be a little difficult. Here’s what you have to do to upgrade your Homebrew-installed PostgreSQL 9.3 to 9.4. Keep in mind, these steps are for a standard Homebrew installation — as long as you haven’t configured custom data directory paths, it should work.